John Mellencamp
Dance Naked

This album, apparently simple and sparse, hides disappointments, failures, and personal tragedies.

John Mellencamp is recovering from the splendid "Human Wheels", a remarkable work, rich with great songs that unfortunately, despite the general applause from critics, did not achieve sufficiently satisfactory sales results. According to the artist, the blame lies entirely with the record label, guilty of not promoting a work that cost John a lot of effort at all. To this is added the sudden departure of guitarist David Grissom, which causes a moment of great disarray in Mellencamp's band, which from this moment will begin to slowly break apart. To complete an already heavy, but still acceptable picture, are the serious heart problems that strike Mellencamp and lead him, if not close to death, to a downsizing of his lifestyle. It is at this point that Little Bastard, with a stroke of pride, decides to gather in his recording studios the musicians who remained faithful to him, to summon the excellent Andy York in place of the resigning Grissom, and to record an album in just a few days.

"Dance Naked" is born like this, in 1994, suddenly. It is a somewhat bare album, far from everything the musician has already published and very brief. A work that has the contours of an indictment against his record label. An indictment and a polemic set to music instantly using the inspiration of the moment. In about half an hour, John Mellencamp condenses anger, frustrations, and once again gifts us with a series of memorable pieces. "When Margaret Comes To Town" with its narrative featuring characters living on the margins of society, is a great track, among the best and most concise of the artist. "Brothers", the almost Byrds-like "Too Much To Think About", and "Dance Naked" itself are all very good songs played and produced in a spartan way following the rule of "good the first time".

The arrangements are stripped down, and the band plays in a measured and non-intrusive way. The stories do not change; they are always the same, as in the splendid folk ballad "Another Sunny Day 12/25", almost a preview of the mood present in the recent and noteworthy "Life, Death, Love And Freedom". In "L.U.V.", a very rhythmic and dark track, the voices of Lisa Germano and Pat Peterson on backing vocals reappear while the choral "The Breakout" and the hard "The Big Jack" admirably perform their role as fillers.

Finally, worth mentioning is the successful reinterpretation of Van Morrison's "Wild Night" where Mellencamp duets with the talented Me' Shell Ndegéocello, providing the album's only single capable of climbing the charts. "Wild Night" is proof, if anyone still had doubts, of John's ability and skill in engaging, with brilliant results, with the repertoires of other great artists. It had already happened with Bob Dylan and in "Dance Naked" it's the turn of the great Van and a track from the "Tupelo Honey" album, personalized and rendered with grit by Mellencamp and his group.

"Dance Naked", produced by Our Man with the loyal Mike Wanchic, remains an atypical episode in the discography of the former Cougar. It is not an indispensable album but has the rare quality of synthesizing in just over thirty minutes all the art of this great artist. Thirty minutes, it is fair to reiterate, of high-quality music. Exactly as it used to be. Early Stones, early Kinks, early rock'n'roll.